38 A History of Judaism
Despite all their variety, common themes recur throughout the biblical
books. They present the Jewish God both as creator of the world and as
the only divine being with whom Israel is to have a relationship. God
has guided the history of Israel, especially in the exodus from Egypt and
the possession of the promised land of Canaan, but God sometimes
interprets the covenant strictly, and punishes his people for disobedi-
ence. The texts are preoccupied with the limits of God’s unconditional
love for his people. How can a God be both just and merciful and allow
suffering in the world? Whatever the answer, the Bible assumes that
individual Jews have a duty to remain within the national covenant by
faithfully observing the injunctions imparted through Moses. This
entailed both ritual and ethical punctiliousness, with a moral code
which is remarkably consistent across the biblical corpus, stressing just-
ice and care for the poor and defenceless (especially widows and
orphans), while prohibiting murder, theft, bribery, corruption and a
wide variety of irregular sexual behaviours.
As we shall see in the next two chapters, the biblical texts provided
more than enough guidance for Jews to try to shape their forms of wor-
ship in public and in private and for them to structure their relationships
within their society in accordance with the stipulations of their God.
But we shall also see, in Part II of this book, that, by the time of
Josephus, interpretation of these texts had led to the development of
diverse forms of Judaism which understood the texts in very different
ways.